Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone. Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. WHAT COULD A CRIMINAL DO WITH A SPEECH SYNTHESIS SYSTEM THAT COULD MASQUERADE AS A HUMAN BEING? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?

The idea of an "INTELLIGENCE EXPLOSION" in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I J Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the "human era will be ended." He called this shift THE SINGULARITY.

This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. "Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years," Dr. Horvitz said. "TECHNOLOGISTS ARE REPLACING RELIGION, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture."

Father Vlasic was named as the 'creator' of the phenomenon by Pavao Zanic, the local bishop at the time the apparitions began in 1981. In the midst of a spat with the local bishop and the Vatican, he had earlier made a prophecy that the Virgin Mary would appear in Bosnia. Months later, six local children said they had seen the Virgin on a nearby hillside. Soon after Father Vlasic announced he was 'spiritual adviser' to the 'visionaries' who now claim that Our Lady has visited them 40,000 times over the last 28 years.

AN ESTIMATED 30 MILLION PILGRIMS HAVE VISITED THE SHRINE SINCE 1981, including many from Britain and Ireland. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, issued a ban on pilgrimages to the site but this has been widely ignored. Father Vlasic was suspended last year by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith amid an inquiry into his conduct after three commissions failed to find evidence to support the visionaries' claims.

The defrocking of Father Vlasic means he is stripped of his priest status. This represents a massive blow to millions of Medjugorje followers worldwide who were hoping that the Vatican would one day legitimise the controversial shrine. THE SEERS HAVE GROWN WEALTHY AS A RESULT OF THEIR CLAIMS – and so has their town, which has boomed as a result of the 'Madonna gold rush'. Some today own smart executive houses with immaculate gardens, double garages and security gates, and one has a tennis court. They also own expensive cars and have married, one of them, Ivan Dragicevic, to an American former beauty queen.

But, WITHOUT ALERTING THE PUBLIC AS IS USUAL WHEN SUCH TRIALS BEGIN, the project has been restarted, prompting environmental groups to warn that local farms and nearby residents could be put at risk. The 400 plants in the field, near Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, were removed just weeks after planting in May 2008 as a result of damage caused by unidentified environmentalists. However, the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs maintains that the original permission for the trial to begin - granted for three years - remains valid and the crops can be replanted without giving further notice.

Campaigners accused ministers of trying to "slip it under the radar" and warned the trial could affect human health. Defra said the potatoes, that will not be used for human or animal consumption, will be grown in a safe environment where there is no risk of contamination. The potatoes will be grown next to plants that will later be destroyed and the whole area will be left fallow for some years after the trial. Fencing, CCTV cameras and guards will protect the crops from being ripped up again.

However Clare Oxborrow, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said AN ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT GENE USED IN THE POTATO COULD HAVE POTENTIAL HEALTH IMPLICATIONS IF IT ESCAPES. She was also concerned about pollen being blown into neighbouring fields. "Defra clearly does not want people to know it is going on this year. This worries us because farmers, gardeners and people living nearby should know about it because of the risk of contaminating other plants with an untested GM product," she said.

Under current EU rules, scientists have to publish the map reference for every GM field trial. HOWEVER MINISTERS ARE UNDERSTOOD TO BE REVIEWING THE RULES SO MORE TRIALS CAN GO AHEAD WITHOUT THREAT OF DISRUPTION.

The article notes that the French government is intent on taking advantage of the financial crisis and the City's dented reputation. "It is clear today that the City is in great difficulty and that is an opportunity for France to reinforce its financial attractiveness," Patrick Devedjian, the Minister in charge of La Défense expansion, said last month. His ambition is to turn La Défense into a "great financial centre, rival to the City of London".

The article notes that France is pressing ahead with its drive to promote French competitiveness in financial services above all by pursuing the harmonisation of financial regulation and supervision at the EU level - a way of eliminating what Mr Sarkozy refers to as 'regulatory dumping'. "I don't want to run down another city, another system, another supervisory scheme," says Christine Lagarde, Finance Minister. "But I do think Paris is well-positioned to play a key role in what will be a rejuvenated and re­invigorated but certainly disciplined financial sector."

The article notes that French bankers are counting on EU rules on bank capital requirements to end what they see as the advantages afforded to British banks under existing UK definitions. France is also calling for an EU clampdown on hedge funds, which many in the industry in London regard as protectionist.

In the Economist, Charlemagne argues that "mutual suspicions and national interests underlie European rows over financial regulation". He notes that earlier this month, Christine Lagarde tried to stop the chairmanship of the European Parliament's committee on financial regulation going to a British MEP, Sharon Bowles. Ms Lagarde spoke to key MEPs about blocking Mrs Bowles, who is a Liberal Democrat. Charlemagne adds that decisions on EU financial regulations will be taken by qualified-majority vote, so Britain will not have a veto.

When Geert Wilders first brought up what he called "the cost of multiculturalism" in the Dutch parliament last year, he got mostly laughs. Wilders claimed non-Western immigration had already cost the Netherlands 100 billion euros and speculated about how that money could have been put to better use. Every elderly person could have had his or her own room in a nursing home, Wilders suggested; we could all have retired at 50.

The CPB (economic policy bureau) calculated that an immigrant who arrives in the Netherlands at age 25 will cost Dutch taxpayers 43,000 euros over the rest of his lifetime. The study did not look into second or third generation immigrants. Economist Pieter Lakeman made an attempt at a cost-benefit analysis of immigration in the Netherlands ten years ago. He said he was the first to ever do so. In his book Binnen zonder kloppen (Enter without knocking), he argued that immigrants were a considerable write-off, costing the government 13 billion guilders (5.9 billion euro) a year.

Immigrants from Turkey and Morocco alone have cost the Netherlands more than 70 billion guilders (31.8 billion euro) in the twenty years until the year 1999. "Without anybody noticing, Dutch immigration policy has become one of the most wasteful forms of government aid around," Lakeman told NRC Handelsblad at the time.

The information that many of the 29 'KILLED SO FAR BY SWINE FLU' HAD OTHER POTENTIALLY LIFE-THREATENING CONDITIONS WAS RARELY MENTIONED. THIS COMPARES WITH 6,000 PEOPLE A YEAR WHO 'DIE OF' NORMAL FLU, without ever making the front page or the ministerial dispatch box. By this Monday, madness ruled. Supplies of the anti-flu drug Tamiflu were said to be 'rolling into the capital in convoys of lorries' to a secret location in Tower Hamlets that was 'surrounded by a ring of steel'. The BBC broadcast a warning that the public should not panic, then promptly bought up 4,000 doses for its staff, doubtless on expenses.

All the victims found the flu less severe and certainly briefer than a bad cold. Most confirm that the one thing not to take is Tamiflu. I do not want to dent the soaring profits of Roche pharmaceuticals, but most I spoke to found the TAMIFLU SIDE- EFFECTS, OF BAD DREAMS, NAUSEA AND IRRITABILITY, FAR WORSE THAN THE ILLNESS. People should take an aspirin.

In Dread, an analysis of medical scares, the American public health expert, Philip Alcabes, offers the sober warning of the 1976 outbreak of swine flu in America. After immunising 45million against a near harmless strain initially compared with the 1918 virus, the federal government had to pay out $93m in compensation for side effects. Time and again, says Alcabes, SCARES ARE USED BY SOMEONE WITH A VESTED INTEREST 'TO INCITE ANXIETY OR SHAKE LOOSE SOME FUNDS'.

What should scare the public is not flu but the shambles of scaremongering that regularly envelopes it. Suppose Britain were afflicted by a serious disease? A HABIT OF MODERN GOVERNMENT IS TO GENERATE PUBLIC DEPENDENCE BY PERIODIC SCARES. To do this with the nation's health is the politics of fear at its worst.

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Spain has been the worst hit and thousands of villagers, including hundreds of British tourists, have had to be evacuated to escape wildfires that have killed five firefighters. Thousands of police and soldiers had been drafted in to help combat seven serious fires in the south and east of Spain. However, one of the most damaging blazes that raged for more than 36 hours in Mojacar, in the southern Andalusia region, has been stabilised, authorities said.

Around 1,500 people spent the night in makeshift shelters, while others spent the night on the beach, as local authorities battled flames circling the hilltop town. On the French island of Corsica, some 10,000 acres of scrub and bush has burnt in 12 separate blazes over the past 24 hours, with temperatures of above 40C and strong winds fanning the flames.

Police said arsonists might be behind eight of the fires. 'Efforts are always centred on the tourist sites and we are forgotten,' said mayor Pierre Castellani. On the Italian island of Sardinia, just to the south of Corsica, two people were killed by flash fires on Thursday and the blazes continued on Friday in seven different places.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show millions of homes have already been secretly assessed by Labour in preparation for council tax hikes expected to target the middle class after the Election. Homes have been given 'value significant codes' which will make virtually every desirable feature taxable.

Although not every home has been assessed, so far nearly 100,000 householders face being penalised simply for having a scenic view from their windows. Even those who have a mere glimpse of a river, hill or park - or any other pleasing outlook - stand to pay more under a special category for 'partial scenic views'. Worst hit among the 11 types of view are likely to be the 26,346 assessed so far as enjoying a full sea view and the 21,709 who overlook a golf course or farmland.

Shadow Local Government Secretary Caroline Spelman said: 'Gordon Brown's council tax inspectors have been caught red-handed preparing the way for massive tax rises on middle England after the Election, to fill the black hole in Britain's ruined public finances. There is now cast-iron proof of a council tax revaluation by stealth.

The Church of England, it is said, CAST ASIDE 2,000 YEARS OF HISTORY LAST WEEK, by inviting couples who have already had children together to get married in church – and while they're at it, to get the godless sprogs baptised. There are some in the press – paragons of chastity themselves, no doubt – who see this as a betrayal of the Christian injunction against sex before marriage. At the very least, they say, the bride and groom should be forced to repent publicly their untimely fornication.

It is strange, too, that the people resisting this change – social conservatives and devout Christians – are those who should most approve of its twin aims: to sign up more young souls for the Church, and to encourage cohabiting couples to tie the knot.

Heaven knows they need a bit of coaxing. The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the proportion of the population getting married has dropped to its lowest level since records began, in 1862. WOMEN UNDER 25 ARE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, MORE LIKELY TO HAVE HAD A BABY THAN TO BE MARRIED; AND 44 PER CENT OF BRITISH CHILDREN ARE NOW BORN OUT OF WEDLOCK.

A Church of England book published this week says they should be regarded as worshippers with "special needs" alongside the blind, the deaf, breast-feeding mothers, very short people and readers of tabloid newspapers. The advice is part of an initiative launched this week to make churches more friendly and less intimidating to newcomers in an attempt to increase attendance at services.

Among those considered to warrant particular attention are people who are blind, deaf or in wheelchairs. However, it also warns that bald people could be "in trouble from those overhead radiant heaters some churches have unwittingly installed" and that special arrangements may need to be made for people who are overweight. "Some pew spaces and chairs are embarrassingly inadequate for what is known in church circles as 'the wider community'," the book says.

Consideration should be given to recovering alcoholics who want to receive communion wine, it suggests, and for those who "find loud noises from organs or music groups distressing". The book, called Everybody Welcome, claims that only one in ten church visitors return because existing worshippers tend to be so unwelcoming. It urges churches to become more professional in their attitude to attracting newcomers and suggests they follow the example of department stores in appointing customer-care managers.

The Taliban has become so powerful in Pakistan that it can afford internecine battles for dominance. At the same time, the Pakistani army, fired up by the US government, is waging a war against the religious militants in the rugged, inhospitable and hard-to-control border region in the northwest. Islamabad's military offensive has prompted the Taliban to withdraw, and yet it is also expanding its radius deep into the country's interior, reaching as far as major cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad.

Day after day, they attack and kill police officers and soldiers, and day after day suicide bombers blow themselves up in markets and mosques. They have committed 218 attacks in the North West Frontier Province this year alone. The death toll from terrorist attacks in Pakistan is now higher than the number of civilian deaths in the war across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has become synonymous with the threat of terrorism to the world. Americans like Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are urging the government in Islamabad to practice "aggressive leadership," and they want the Pakistani army to crush and kill the extremists on Pakistani soil. The Taliban is expanding the combat zone, leaving a trail of blood with attacks across the entire country, from Kashmir in the north to Karachi in the south. PAKISTAN IS NOT COLLAPSING, BUT IT IS BEING CONSUMED BY VIOLENCE AND UNDERMINED BY THE FEAR that anyone, at any time, can fall victim to the next attack.

The US State Department says he will be looking at ways to promote peace talks between Syria and Israel. Correspondents say the visit is not expected to bring a breakthrough, but Syrian officials are encouraged by Washington's new willingness to listen. Several other high-ranking US officials will also be in the Middle East in the next few days.

Last month, Mr Mitchell became the highest-level US official to visit Damascus since 2005. After meeting the Syrian president, he will travel to Israel as part of efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Damascus is a major player in the region, because of its support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, its backing for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its close links with Iran.

Washington is a long way away from getting Damascus on its side, but for now at least, the atmosphere of hostility which dominated during the Bush administration seems to be a thing of the past, our correspondent says.

If you read the actual federal budget for 2009, it's an astonishing $3.1 trillion. The size of the number itself is mind-boggling, but it's even more disturbing when you realize just how much of the federal budget is spent on these three things:

WAR – DISEASE - DEBT - Of course, if you actually work in Washington, you won't even describe these as "War, Disease and Debt." Instead, you call them: DEFENSE – HEALTH - THE ECONOMY

It all sounds much nicer when phrased that way. But these terms are intentionally deceptive. We're not really "defending" our way into Iraq, Afghanistan and seventy-five other countries where we have a military presence. Spending on "health care" doesn't have anything to do with health (it's all about disease). And people who say spending more debt money to "help the economy" are mathematical retards. You can't get yourself out of debt by spending more money (even though Vide President Joe Biden insists you can...).

Total US Federal Budget for 2009: $3.1 trillion

1) WAR: Department of Defense ($515.4 billion) + War on Terror ($145.2 billion) + Department of Veterans Affairs ($44.8 billion) + Department of Homeland Security ($37.6 billion) = $743 billion

2) DISEASE: Medicare ($408 billion) + Medicaid ($224 billion) + Department of Health and Human Services ($70 billion) = $702 billion

3) DEBT: Debt to the people: Social Security ($644 billion), Social Security Administration ($8.4 billion), Welfare ($360 billion) and Interest on National Debt ($260 billion) = $1,272 billion

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of NEEDLESSLY RAISING ALARM OVER MELTING HIMALAYAN GLACIERS. He dismissed scientists' predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. "We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere," he said.

"Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience." Mr Ramesh was also clear that India would not take on targets to cut its emissions, even though developed countries are asking only for curbs in the growth of emissions, rather than absolute cuts.

Seven of the world's greatest rivers , including the Ganges and the Yangtze, are fed by the glaciers of the Himalayas and Tibet. They supply water to about 40 per cent of the world's population. Water supply is likely to become an increasing national security priority for both India and China as they seek to maintain high economic growth rates and sustain large populations dependent on farming.

Some scientists have warned that rivers such as the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra could become seasonal rivers as a result of global warming. Mr Ramesh said the rate of retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas varied from a "couple of centimetres a year to a couple of metres", BUT THAT THIS WAS A NATURAL PROCESS THAT HAD TAKEN PLACE OCCURRED OVER THE CENTURIES. SOME WERE, IN FACT, GROWING, HE SAID.

Phoenix police said calls had come in from all over the US offering money, or even to adopt the young girl. The boys, Liberian immigrants aged nine to 14, have been charged with rape. The case has sparked outrage across the US and even drawn condemnation from Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an outspoken anti-rape campaigner.

"I think that family is wrong. They should help that child who has been traumatised," Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf told CNN. "They too need serious counselling because clearly they are doing something, SOMETHING THAT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE IN OUR SOCIETY HERE," she added.

The outrage over the allegations has intensified when police said the girl's parents criticized her after the attack and BLAMED HER FOR BRINGING SHAME ON THE FAMILY. "THE FATHER TOLD THE CASE WORKER AND AN OFFICER IN HER PRESENCE THAT HE DIDN'T WANT HER BACK. He said 'Take her, I don't want her,'" Hill said. Hill cited the family's (Moslem) background as the reason the family shunned the girl. All five children are refugees from the West African nation of Liberia.